Implementing hospital policies to address robotic-assisted surgery management and training may help improve quality outcomes and reduce costs, according to University of Minneapolis researchers.
For the study, published in the Journal of Operations Management, UM researchers examined the impact of three hospital policies on expanding access to robotic-assisted surgery technology, according to a Feb. 11 news release emailed to Becker's Hospital Review.
Researchers analyzed 200 hysterectomies at a Midwestern U.S. hospital; 50 of the surgeries were done without the assistance of a robot and 150 were assisted by the da Vinci robotic surgical system.
The research team used the data to examine the following three hospital policies:
1. Prioritizing patients for robot-assisted surgery based on how critical the patient's condition is.
2. There is an optimal number of surgeons to participate in training on the surgical robots because hospitals that have them usually are limited to one or two robots.
3. The minimum experience level of a surgeon is included in the surgical training pool.
Through the analysis, the researchers found that establishing a threshold policy for how critical a patient's disease is improved clinical outcomes for patients and kept surgical costs down. Additionally, the team found that the learning curve for novice and expert surgeons is indistinguishable when it came to learn how to use the surgical robot; and setting minimum experience levels for surgeries such as conducting 25 to 50 surgeries lowers the amount of blood lost, surgical time and cost.
The researchers concluded that if all three robot-assisted surgery policies are implemented, surgical costs could be lower than manual laparoscopies and robotic-assisted surgeries.